Because hexagons are the bestagons.
Science Memes
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the only answer i'll ever need
Bestagons, Roll out!
wait...

This picture makes squares jealous
It's less weird when you realize it's not a hexagon, it's a sine wave in cylindrical coordinates. There are a lot of negative feedback loops such that a sine wave can turn into a standing wave. You just have to get a little lucky with a couple important things like your rossby number et voila, hexagon.
this.ToEnglish()
Take this, bend it around the pole so it becomes circular.
A planet with an investment chart for a pole. WHY.
sine waves aren't strictly an investment thing, they are more of a general math thing and can be used to model a wide variety of stuff (in this case this graph is for investing, but for example it comes up in physics a lot)
Capitalism ruining everything.
Here's a better visualization from Minute Physics how these "wave" patterns can make geometric shapes, using the fact that Earth's moon doesn't make a smooth circle around the sun.
That doesn't sound less weird.
Because Saturn is Catan.
Base game got boring, I recommend the Ringfarers expansion.
Somewhat topically, Terraforming Mars clears
Things like Hexagons and the golden spiral occurring in nature are interesting - but very well-travelled.

And I don't mean she travels a lot. -Bender Bending Rodriguez
TLDR That's what happens when circles get squished together.
Because storms want to be circles but any given gas giants atmosphere is basically a series of nothing but storms and when you tile circles you get a hexagonal grid due to the spaces in between them?
Standing wave. Earth kind of has one in the jet stream (3 peaks and troughs though, usually), but you can't see it with visible light.
Aguiar, Ana C. Barbosa, et al. "A laboratory model of Saturn’s North Polar Hexagon." Icarus 206.2 (2010): 755-763.
Get out of here with your real answers. 😜
I think the actual answer even with this source is, we sort of have some clues, but we have more questions too.
To better understand how nature doesn't always make smooth circles out of circular patterns, this Minute Physics video does a banger job using the Earth's moon as an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBcxuM-qXec
For Saturn, you're talking about storm patterns that aggregate near the poles, but the concept is somewhat similar, which is that forces acting on objects (storms) can arrange circles into wave-like shapes.
All that said, I believe that Saturn's hexagon is still not fully understood, and still may be signs of a deeper alien death-star hiding in the clouds and we should probably like... I dunno, stock up on canned beans and toilet paper.
Hexagons are just nature's way of making arrays of triangles.
Based on what I recall of the explanation by the person who figured it out: spinning makes fluid near the edge spin faster than fluid near the middle. The difference in speed creates a wave. Since it's finite and moving, the wave interferes with itself and because of math, makes a hexagon. Something about how the wave pattern changes density and brings different glasses to the surface on the planets.
Then they showed an example by spinning a bucket, and it kinda fell flat because they had to explain that a bucket isn't a sphere so you have to spin it just right to get it to work, but it did work in the end.
What, you want to tighten the axis with a torx?
A T10^4
You get hexagons as well when you drill a countersink bit into plywood. Something something layers.
Did not know that so I looked on Google.
AI Overview That statement is incorrect. Drilling a countersink bit into plywood (or any wood) produces a smooth, conical hole, not a hexagonal one.
Followed by every article talking about why the bits make hexagons, with videos and pictures.
Haha I love AI! We're so close to AGI I swear bro!
Interesting, I've only had the hexagon thing happen to me in plywood, but it seems it can happen in regular wood as well.
I feel like I just got goatsed by Saturn
This was the topic of an awesome old web comic strip, I believe it was from smbc. It was a debate of two where one would simply state the existence of the hexagon, with increasing amounts of slurs. Banger.
Yup found it: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-07-06
There's an xkcd one also, but not as funny: https://xkcd.com/2513/?ref=refind
Because the fox made it into the henhouse.
Now all the hexagon.